If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Real production app vs class project

I am not sure if this is the right place to ask this, but I recently graduated from my University and am seeking a full time employment as a Node, JavaScript, Express, HTML, CSS, React, Redux, MongoDB, MySQL full stack developer. My employers seem to want more experience but what I want to know is, how different are real production apps compared to a class group project? For example, in terms of syntax and code, is it the same except production apps just have more code? Any references to great resources on this subject would be greatly appreciated?

I have myself dreaded production apps when starting to apply for programming jobs, scared that they would be too complex for me to understand. But it's just a myth. Understanding bigger and complex applications just requires you to grind longer. Web appplications are IMHO, very simple applications.
I have now 5 years of working as a web developer, on both server and client side code.

Production apps are longer, and most of the time they have weird bad code. Obviously, if it's a good company, luckily the code will be cleaner, but that doesn't happen often.

Also, in a real world application, you have to account for different stuff. Like, for example, not storing users passwords in plain text, but hashing them. You'd be surprised of the amount of serious sites have no encryption of passwords, you can google that.

So it's more about the amount of things like this you have to account for, rather them being so complex you can't grasp. In general, even a production server for a site, is long, not complex, that's my opinion.

So, when starting to work as a dev, it's best to work on an already done project. You just gotta grind, and work, and ask questions.